Hutcheson was an important influence on the works of several significant Enlightenment thinkers, including David Hume and Adam Smith.

Facing suspicions about his "Irish" roots and his association with New Licht theologian John Simson (then under investigation by Scottish ecclesiastical courts), a ministry for him in Scotland was unlikely to be a success, so he returned to Ireland and received a licence to preach.

Dr Hugh Boulter, Lord Archbishop of Armagh, seem to have been cordial, and his biographer, speaking of "the inclination of his friends to serve him, the schemes proposed to him for obtaining promotion",[citation needed] etc., probably refers to some offers of preferment, on condition of his accepting episcopal ordination.

[2] In 1729, Hutcheson succeeded his old master, Gershom Carmichael, in the Chair of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, being the first professor there to lecture in English instead of Latin.

In 1730, he entered on the duties of his office, delivering an inaugural lecture (afterwards published), De naturali hominum socialitate (About the natural fellowship of mankind).

He appreciated having leisure for his favourite studies; "non-levi igitur laetitia commovebar cum almam matrem Academiam me, suum olim alumnum, in libertatem asseruisse audiveram.

"[citation needed] (I was, therefore, moved by no mean frivolous pleasure when I had heard that my alma mater had delivered me, its one time alumnus, into freedom.)

"[T]he order of topics discussed in the economic portion of Hutcheson’s System [of Moral Philosophy, 1755] is repeated by Smith in his Glasgow Lectures and again in the Wealth of Nations.

He is buried in the churchyard of Saint Mary's, which is also the final resting place of his cousin, the architect Sir William Bruce.

"His principal design," he says in the preface to the two first treatises, "is to show that human nature was not left quite indifferent in the affair of virtue, to form to itself observations concerning the advantage or disadvantage of actions, and accordingly to regulate its conduct.

The Author of nature has much better furnished us for a virtuous conduct than our moralists seem to imagine, by almost as quick and powerful instructions as we have for the preservation of our bodies.

"[2] Passing over the appeal to final causes involved in this passage, as well as the assumption that the "moral sense" has had no growth or history, but was "implanted" in man exactly as found among the more civilized races (an assumption common to both Hutcheson and Butler), his use of the term "sense" tends to obscure the real nature of the process of moral judgement.

All mankind may approve of that which is virtuous or makes for the general good, but they entertain the most widely divergent opinions and frequently arrive at directly opposite conclusions as to particular actions and habits.

For, if each person's decisions are solely the result of an immediate intuition of the moral sense, why be at any pains to test, correct or review them?

Intuition has no possible connection with an empirical calculation of results, and Hutcheson in adopting such a criterion practically denies his fundamental assumption.

Butler's Sermons appeared in 1726, the year after the publication of Hutcheson's two first essays, and there are parallels between the "conscience" of the one writer and the "moral sense" of the other.

Other important points in which Hutcheson follows the lead of Locke are his depreciation of the importance of the so-called laws of thought, his distinction between the primary and secondary qualities of bodies, the position that we cannot know the inmost essences of things ("intimae rerum naturae sive essentiae"), though they excite various ideas in us, and the assumption that external things are known only through the medium of ideas (Syn.

"Haec prima qualitatum primariarum perceptio, sive mentis actio quaedam sive passio dicatur, non-alia similitudinis aut convenientiae inter ejusmodi ideas et res ipsas causa assignari posse videtur, quam ipse Deus, qui certa naturae lege hoc efilcit, Ut notiones, quae rebus praesentibus excitantur, sint ipsis similes, aut saltem earum habitudines, si non-veras quantitates, depingant" (pars ii.

[11] Amongst the more important points in which Hutcheson diverges from Locke is his account of the idea of personal identity, which he appears to have regarded as made known to us directly by consciousness.

[11] Thus, in estimating Hutcheson's position, we find that in particular questions he stands nearer to Locke, but in the general spirit of his philosophy he seems to approach more closely to his Scottish successors.

[11] The short Compendium of Logic, which is more original than such works usually are, is remarkable chiefly for the large proportion of psychological matter that it contains.

The latter reason leads him to call attention to the beauty perceived in universal truths, in the operations of general causes and in moral principles and actions.

To say nothing of minor opponents, such as "Philaretus" (Gilbert Burnet, already alluded to), Dr John Balguy (1686–1748), prebendary of Salisbury, the author of two tracts on "The Foundation of Moral Goodness", and Dr John Taylor (1694–1761) of Norwich, a minister of considerable reputation in his time (author of An Examination of the Scheme of Amorality advanced by Dr Hutcheson), the essays appear to have suggested, by antagonism, at least two works that hold a permanent place in the literature of English ethics—Butler's Dissertation on the Nature of Virtue, and Richard Price's Treatise of Moral Good and Evil (1757).

[13] In addition to the works named, the following were published during Hutcheson's lifetime: a pamphlet entitled Considerations on Patronage (1735); Philosophiae moralis institutio compendiaria, ethices et jurisprudentiae naturalis elementa continens, lib.

After his death, his son, Francis Hutcheson published much the longest of his works, A System of Moral Philosophy, in Three Books (2 vols.

His standpoint has a negative and a positive aspect; he is in strong opposition to Thomas Hobbes and Mandeville, and in fundamental agreement with Shaftesbury, whose name he very properly coupled with his own on the title page of the first two essays.

Obvious and fundamental points of agreement between the two authors include the analogy drawn between beauty and virtue, the functions assigned to the moral sense, the position that the benevolent feelings form an original and irreducible part of our nature, and the unhesitating adoption of the principle that the test of virtuous action is its tendency to promote the general welfare.

[13] Norman Fiering, a specialist in the intellectual history of colonial New England, has described Francis Hutcheson as "probably the most influential and respected moral philosopher in America in the eighteenth century".

[21] Another signer of the Declaration of Independence, John Witherspoon of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), relied heavily on Hutcheson's views in his own lectures on moral philosophy.

[26] Wills' view has been partially supported by Samuel Fleischacker, who agreed that it is "perfectly reasonable to see Hutcheson’s influence behind the appeals to sentiment that Jefferson put into his draft of the Declaration..."[27]